With the Beatles/Meet the Beatles - Suggestions

Jabapac

Gender: Male
Age: 36

StreetSpirit wrote:

Or 3. Make everyone happy with my idea and just list both track listings on the album's page. RYM and Wikipedia do that. Why can't we?

Agree

Romanelli
Bone Swah

Gender: Male
Location: Broomfield, Colorado

Moderator

When The Beatles discography was released on CD in 1988, it was done with a very clear plan to solve the problem of UK (and the rest of the world) versions vs. US versions. The UK versions were used as the official versions worldwide, with the two disc Past Masters compilations to contain the tracks that were not included on the UK albums. The US versions (and albums released only in other countries as well) were rendered obsolete by this, until someone decided that the US albums should have their own CD releases. Fine. But the intent of the 1988 releases was to put the Beatles discography into one uniform set of albums, not the mess that having US and UK albums had created in the 60's.

My opinion is that this should be the model that BEA follows. Also, it is not on BEA to list alternate track listings of albums. That's not what the site has ever been about, and if alternate track listings and versions were to be allowed, the data entry nightmare of having albums with sometimes dozens of different track lists would probably alone kill BEA, and would make it no longer unique in the way that it is. (NOTE: On Discogs, A Hard Day's Night has, as of today, 498 different versions listed). BEA is for original official releases only. The US Beatles albums ceased to be the original official albums in 1988 when the discography was consolidated. And from the day BEA opened its "doors", until this post popped up, this has been nothing more than a minor annoyance and pretty much a non issue. And The UK Beatles albums don't seem to be suffering from any kind of confusion as far as the overall chart is concerned because of "alternate" versions. They seem to be all sitting in the top 1000 just fine, even though there are American releases here as well.

It is my opinion that the US release only Beatles albums from the 60's that should be allowed on BEA are the ones that are officially compilation albums (Yesterday And Today, Hey Jude, etc.). I would recommend that, in the spirit of what BEA is for and for the sake of keeping The Beatles discography on THIS site as it should be (as it has been intended to be since 1988), the following albums should be considered for removal:

The Beatles Second Album
Meet The Beatles!
Something New
Beatles VI
Twist And Shout
Introducing...The Beatles
A Hard Day's Night (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Help! (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

I believe that this should be done not only in order to keep the Beatles discography here on BEA sane and in line with what the intent of the official discography is...but to also keep from allowing other discographies to have alternate versions allowed because "you did it with The Beatles..."

As for The Clash...it should have (and now does have) the original release date of the UK album.
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CA Dreamin

Gender: Male
Location: LA

Romanelli wrote:

Also, it is not on BEA to list alternate track listings of albums. That's not what the site has ever been about, and if alternate track listings and versions were to be allowed, the data entry nightmare of having albums with sometimes dozens of different track lists would probably alone kill BEA, and would make it no longer unique in the way that it is. (NOTE: On Discogs, A Hard Day's Night has, as of today, 498 different versions listed).

This is horribly misleading. This makes it sound like there are 498 different tracklists for A Hard Day's Night, which of course there aren't. In addition, I looked up some of those 498 versions on Discogs, and found they were basically duplicate versions of each other hundreds of times over. The only difference being country of release, and format (vinyl, CD, cassette, etc). You know how many track listings there are for A Hard Day's Night? Answer. 2. One for the UK and one for North America. That's it. Just 2, not 498. That is not a data entry nightmare. That's a few minutes of typing.

Furthermore, it is not on BEA to list alternate track listings of albums? First of all, why not? Secondly, who's to say BEA's tracklists are official and everything else is alternate? Which BEA moderator personally asked Joe Strummer (before he died) "Hey Joe, I was wondering, which tracklist for The Clash's self-titled album do you consider the official one?" Claiming BEA's tracklists are official and every other one is wrong comes across as elitist. With regards to The Clash, their website doesn't declare one tracklist "official" and the other "alternate". It simply lists them both. I don't see what the big deal is on why BEA cannot do the same.

Here's an even better example. Synchronicity by The Police. BEA has the track listing that doesn't have the song Murder By Numbers at the end. Because when it was released in 1983, the vinyl issue didn't include that song. However, the CD and cassette versions were released the same day...and they both included that song. And every remastered version of Synchronicity since then also includes Murder By Numbers. Yes, even The Police's official web site lists that song on the album. So here BEA's rule of thumb falls flat on its face. If both versions were released on the same day, how can one be more official than the other? If the band's official web site says that song is on the album, is BEA claiming to know the album better than the people who produced it? Again, the solution is to simply list both versions on BEA's site. I don't see what is so hard about that.

Romanelli wrote:

The US Beatles albums ceased to be the original official albums in 1988 when the discography was consolidated. And from the day BEA opened its "doors", until this post popped up, this has been nothing more than a minor annoyance and pretty much a non issue. And The UK Beatles albums don't seem to be suffering from any kind of confusion as far as the overall chart is concerned because of "alternate" versions. They seem to be all sitting in the top 1000 just fine, even though there are American releases here as well.

It is my opinion that the US release only Beatles albums from the 60's that should be allowed on BEA are the ones that are officially compilation albums (Yesterday And Today, Hey Jude, etc.). I would recommend that, in the spirit of what BEA is for and for the sake of keeping The Beatles discography on THIS site as it should be (as it has been intended to be since 1988), the following albums should be considered for removal:

The Beatles Second Album
Meet The Beatles!
Something New
Beatles VI
Twist And Shout
Introducing...The Beatles
A Hard Day's Night (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Help! (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

I believe that this should be done not only in order to keep the Beatles discography here on BEA sane and in line with what the intent of the official discography is...but to also keep from allowing other discographies to have alternate versions allowed because "you did it with The Beatles..."

Ah yes, coming back to The Beatles, who prompted this discussion. I agree with Romanelli that those albums should be considered for deletion. For this reasoning...they are not listed on the band's web site, which suggests the band does not acknowledge them and does not consider them as part of their official work. The Beatles seemed to make that clear back in 1988, and reinforced that on their web site.

But as for The Clash, The Police, Depeche Mode, The Rolling Stones, The Strokes, and other artists who have albums with multiple track listings, I think the best course of action is to look to band's artistic intent, not just whatever they released first. The bands' official web sites are the places to look. And if the answer isn't conclusive, just list both tracklists on BEA. I'd be willing to help research on this.

Romanelli
Bone Swah

Gender: Male
Location: Broomfield, Colorado

Moderator

StreetSpirit wrote:

This is horribly misleading. This makes it sound like there are 498 different tracklists for A Hard Day's Night, which of course there aren't. In addition, I looked up some of those 498 versions on Discogs, and found they were basically duplicate versions of each other hundreds of times over. The only difference being country of release, and format (vinyl, CD, cassette, etc). You know how many track listings there are for A Hard Day's Night? Answer. 2. One for the UK and one for North America. That's it. Just 2, not 498. That is not a data entry nightmare. That's a few minutes of typing.

Furthermore, it is not on BEA to list alternate track listings of albums? First of all, why not? Secondly, who's to say BEA's tracklists are official and everything else is alternate? Which BEA moderator personally asked Joe Strummer (before he died) "Hey Joe, I was wondering, which tracklist for The Clash's self-titled album do you consider the official one?" Claiming BEA's tracklists are official and every other one is wrong comes across as elitist. With regards to The Clash, their website doesn't declare one tracklist "official" and the other "alternate". It simply lists them both. I don't see what the big deal is on why BEA cannot do the same.

Here's an even better example. Synchronicity by The Police. BEA has the track listing that doesn't have the song Murder By Numbers at the end. Because when it was released in 1983, the vinyl issue didn't include that song. However, the CD and cassette versions were released the same day...and they both included that song. And every remastered version of Synchronicity since then also includes Murder By Numbers. Yes, even The Police's official web site lists that song on the album. So here BEA's rule of thumb falls flat on its face. If both versions were released on the same day, how can one be more official than the other? If the band's official web site says that song is on the album, is BEA claiming to know the album better than the people who produced it? Again, the solution is to simply list both versions on BEA's site. I don't see what is so hard about that.

Romanelli wrote:

The US Beatles albums ceased to be the original official albums in 1988 when the discography was consolidated. And from the day BEA opened its "doors", until this post popped up, this has been nothing more than a minor annoyance and pretty much a non issue. And The UK Beatles albums don't seem to be suffering from any kind of confusion as far as the overall chart is concerned because of "alternate" versions. They seem to be all sitting in the top 1000 just fine, even though there are American releases here as well.

It is my opinion that the US release only Beatles albums from the 60's that should be allowed on BEA are the ones that are officially compilation albums (Yesterday And Today, Hey Jude, etc.). I would recommend that, in the spirit of what BEA is for and for the sake of keeping The Beatles discography on THIS site as it should be (as it has been intended to be since 1988), the following albums should be considered for removal:

The Beatles Second Album
Meet The Beatles!
Something New
Beatles VI
Twist And Shout
Introducing...The Beatles
A Hard Day's Night (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Help! (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

I believe that this should be done not only in order to keep the Beatles discography here on BEA sane and in line with what the intent of the official discography is...but to also keep from allowing other discographies to have alternate versions allowed because "you did it with The Beatles..."

Ah yes, coming back to The Beatles, who prompted this discussion. I agree with Romanelli that those albums should be considered for deletion. For this reasoning...they are not listed on the band's web site, which suggests the band does not acknowledge them and does not consider them as part of their official work. The Beatles seemed to make that clear back in 1988, and reinforced that on their web site.

But as for The Clash, The Police, Depeche Mode, The Rolling Stones, The Strokes, and other artists who have albums with multiple track listings, I think the best course of action is to look to band's artistic intent, not just whatever they released first. The bands' official web sites are the places to look. And if the answer isn't conclusive, just list both tracklists on BEA. I'd be willing to help research on this.

First of all...yes. The number for A Hard Days Night was maybe not the best example to use. However...there ARE albums with multiple releases with multiple track listings. So, do we include bonus tracks? Do we have to go back and update an album's track list every time there's a new release with a bonus track...or 10? As far as a "few minutes of typing"...you could maybe spend more time doing some data entry yourself and see what's involved with it as things are right now. I completely cleaned up the newly added albums yesterday..and right now, there are 30 newly added albums that have not yet been touched. And if I don't do anything for the next 4 or 5 days, that number could be close to 100. That's not counting the over 5800 albums released since 2004 that are still pending full release dates. Now...add in updated track listings and album art (because people will want that, too) and dates when the new editions come out, and you've got yourself a world of fun for those of us who take time to help with the data entry on this site (which can be more time than you might think).

No one is saying that what BEA has for each album is absolute and correct. Yesterday, when it was pointed out that the date for The Clash was wrong, I saw that that was indeed the case and fixed it. If it's something that involves a decision (like "Murder By Numbers", which, again I was not aware of), the process is as simple as asking AM. NOBODY claims that "BEA's tracklists are official and every other one is wrong". I wouldn't claim that any site gets it right all the time...ever. But we try. And those of us who do put in this work check multiple sources and do the best we can to be accurate. If you think we should be doing better...by all means...jump in and help. If AM agrees that something like "Murder By Numbers" should be included on the album in question, then let's do it. But he has reasons for having the site set up as he does, and from my standpoint, it WOULD create much more work on the data entry side...work that only a handful of people seem willing to do on a regular basis. I think it would be much more work than you think it would be. And the aspect of BEA being simple would become...less of that. In my opinion.

As for listing multiple versions of albums on BEA...I have also offered my opinion on that, and I will leave that for AM to answer, as he has done many times before.

And I agree that band websites should be consulted more. AM has even added a field to add the official artist web page in the data entry section for artists. And I agree that the artists intent is very important. And I believe that there are things we could be doing better...but I also think that the current set up is quite good.

But I am not the expert on this site. That's AM. He should be the one to give you definitive answers to your questions.
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albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

BEA was created about 13 years ago and the reason it was originally set up was to provide users with a list of the best music albums based on their appearances in greatest album charts published by authoritative sources. The design of the site was therefore driven by the fact that each release of an album was considered the 'same' across different charts. Over time, the site had to evolve some 'rules' to help keep the site easy to manage. One of the rules was that each release on BEA is the 'original' release of an album. This makes the site 'easy' to administer and (mostly) prevents arguments over which release should be listed on BEA.

I disagree with the view that BEA is claiming the track listings as 'official'. We don't. We just list the 'original' version of an album (the first official release - 'official' only used to distinguish a release from a promo, bootleg or pre-release). BEA cannot update their track list each time an artist has a re-think about the track list (if that becomes the case, we can't possibly hope to keep up). The track list is simply taken from the first release of an album (the same with the artwork). The original version of an album makes the site as easy to administer as possible. The admin for each album only needs to be done once (and not revisited each time there is a re-issue, or a change in the artist's opinion).

This thread has talked a lot about The Beatles (& The Police etc) and referring to their discography for the 'correct' version to list and using their official websites to referee the track lists on BEA. Although I can see the merit in doing this, it's simply not scalable across 100,000 different albums. To go down the route of curating the 'correct' track list for each album from each artist's website is going to lead to an inconsistent approach and will cause an overhead in looking after the site and handling disputes where people disagree over which track list should be used. BEA doesn't pretend to be the 'correct' source of all track lists, we are simply listing the original version of each album (these are different things).

Although i can definitely see the huge value that it would add, BEA is not ready to list multiple releases of each album at the moment. Listing multiple releases is not as straight forward as showing extra track lists, artwork and release dates. There are other considerations, such as handling ratings where the same track appears on multiple versions of the same album, and dealing with the ranking of an album where multiple versions of the same album could potentially appear in the same chart. These are all things that require proper discussion and thinking about (and then development and coding). It will take time to do this.

It's important the site is consistent, so let's flag The Beatles albums which are being considered for merging on the album admin pages and look into each one separately.

The way BEA deals with multiple releases of an album on the same day is that the 'regular' version of an album is listed (and not special releases or bonus tracks etc). if the album is released on different formats on the same day with different track lists (or artwork), then normally the vinyl release takes priority (but this is more a rule of thumb and probably requires further discussion for a more consistent approach).

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

Good points, AM. It would be nice to have multiple track lists displayed for releases in which there are key differences based on country of release etc. But it makes a lot of sense to consider that only after the site redesign is complete and satisfactory.
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